Chapter 1
Jade Mountain High Security Prison, Green Nation
The prison was the home of the worst of the worst, war criminals. The Tan Republic, upon its surrender, had seen its leadership, namely one General Plastro, surrendered to the Greens who'd put him on trial for a laundry list of crimes. Some called it a kangaroo court, others justice. But the results had been the same, General Plastro, for his crimes against humanity, had been sentenced to life imprisonment. This was three years ago, and tonight, was to be his last night in this wretched prison.
Within the low forest mountains deep in the snowy north of the Green Nation the Jade Mountain High Security Prison was settled into a box canyon, with a waterfall on its south side providing spectacular views and an effective moat as a high mountain stream formed here and with a sheer cliff of gray stone behind only one way was deemed acceptable for the four men in gray tan camouflage who were now slowly approaching, straight down the cliff from above. The searchlights of the four guard towers were crisscrossing the interior yard, with the lone blocky concrete building in the center well and truly standing alone behind the tall double-layered barbed wire fence with concertina wire layered thickly on top of the fifteen-feet high fences.
Guards with M4A1 carbines clipped to their chests with simple patrol caps on patrolled the perimeter, each man having a taser on their chest in a holster, ready to zap any prospective escapee who crossed their path. Each guard tower had a single M240B with multiple boxes of 7.62x39mm ammunition belts with each man having an M17 pistol and an M4A1. They each had a black and white shoulder pauldron on their shoulders, with the letters "MP" emblazoned upon them. There were a hundred of them here, guarding a mere handful of a dozen prisoners, all Tan high priority prisoners, men like General Plastro. But they had Blue prisoners here too, people like Brigitte Bleu, the lethal femme fatal of the Blue Nation's now defunct Secret Security Service. It was actually a small facility, but a smaller facility was easier to guard. But it also made it somewhat easier to attack.
But, little did the Green Nation MP's know that their prisoners still had a number of allies, dangerous ones. These men carefully negotiating the cliff bore the tan flag with the black stylized 'T' of the Tan Republic. They had very high-end kit, HK416's with suppressors high-end magnified sights with flashlights and visible and IR laser emitters with flip-down GPNVG-18 night vision devices attached to their helmets, each one a FAST Ballistic helmet with integrated ear protection and communications linked to encrypted radios and light and well-kitted with CRYE AVS plate carriers with personalized setups with magazine pouches and grenades of several kinds tightly secured. These were elite operators, each of them in communication with a pair of marksmen stationed to their west on the clifftop, HK417's with long highly-advanced suppressors present with a satellite uplink antennae next to them for bouncing their communications to their ready-and-waiting command center and extract bird. They had reconned this area for weeks and memorized the interior layout of their target location.
The four commandoes snaking their way down the cliff were almost to the level of the four guard towers, the one they approached being build into the cliff where the compound joined with the base of the cliff. The guards present at the towers were awake and aware, but not particularly observant to what was directly above them. The four men had descended in pairs, one pair above each of the two northern towers. One man from each of the pairs of commandoes took his carbine and secured it, and then slipped a suppressed Glock 17 from his holster loaded with subsonic rounds for insuring complete silence. He then, in concert with one another slipped down, and fired their rounds point-blank into the backs of the heads of the Green guards who crumped with a spray of green against the white-painted concrete structures they were within. Likewise, across the fences, the two guards in the opposite towers dropped as the two supporting snipers fired in concert with each other. The guards on the ground on patrol had heard the zip of the rounds coming in, but were unable to say a word of warning before they too were dropped where they stood.
It didn't take long for the commando team to signal for the rest of their team to make a much more rapid descent down the cliff. Rappelling down the face came more than three dozen operators, likewise armed and equipped with top-of-the-line gear who joined the group as they rushed the walls and emplaced large explosive planks at the noted spots. Within moments, the teams were in position and as one, the explosives went off, blowing large holes into the walls, exactly in the location of the corridors of the interior where they would be able to breach and maneuver with speed and aggression. With this speed and aggression the well-trained operators made entry, stepping in with their carbines tucked tightly to their shoulders, and began gunning down everyone wearing green that they saw.
The fight was obviously one-sided, with the siren blaring loudly, the Green MP's rushed to their posts, but were overmatched as the cells were reached. Sitting in his cell, a smirk on his face as he wore an tan jumpsuit with a mere serial number denoting him General Plastro was all-too-pleased with himself. His back-up plan had paid dividends at last. He was soon to be free from this prison, and with all his trusted subordinates all in one place, he'd have his same crew together once more, ready to retake his position of power and prestige, and finish the Tan Republic's mission of enforcing its superiority.
"General," an operator said eagerly after a thermite grenade was used to melt open the door and was kicked in, "Are you alright sir?"
"Yes, yes, took you long enough Captain Lion," Plastro said as he stood up, brushing himself off as he stepped forward into the hallway, pleased to see it strewn with a few Green corpses, their green-colored blood smeared on the walls and pooling around their motionless bodies.
"All stations, Pride-Six, have passed Jackpot, moving to Extraction," the captain of the force in charge of this rescue stated evenly as he communicated to his people and with a team of four men guarding Plastro himself the group now moved through the highest-security zone of the prison into the more general holding areas where additional Greens were laying about, and where Plastro's main subordinates were already freed.
Assembled were individuals such as Field Marshal Tannenburg, his second-in-command, Baron von Beige, his lead ace pilot and leader of the Tan Air Force's premier fighter squadron, Major Mylar, his chief of intelligence, and Brigitte Bleu, his main liaison in the Blue Secret Security Service and that organizations best agent. These individuals' own underlings, roughly a dozen in total, were present and gathered together and now making their way up as the Tan commandoes now began escorting them to the roof and its helipad. The deep rapid thumping of an approaching helicopter caught their attention as a tan-colored tandem rotor workhorse came over the trees of the mountainside to their east, rapidly descending as it banked and aligned itself with the facility's roof. It was an MH-47G "Chinook", coming in with a pair of M134 Miniguns manned by the aircraft's crew chief and assistant with their tan-colored HGU-56P's with masks on, clear visors down, and twin AN/PVS-15 Twin-Tube Night Vision Goggles on. The wind whipped and whirled as the rescued prisoners were kept down inside as the helicopter spun and around its lowered ramp was brought to face them and the helicopter gingerly touched down. Two additional operators, the two snipers the helicopter had already picked up, knelt just at the foot of the ramp as their comrades and commanders were rushed aboard.
"All aboard! Lifting time now," the pilot said dutifully as the helicopter now took off, and nosed down as the pilot applied full collective to get their bird up the steep terrain and into the Green air defenses' blind spots in the valleys leading to open water where a ship, transiting the commercial sea lanes, was already waiting.
As they escaped, the blocky prison building erupted in a cacophonous explosion of smoke and dust and a column of dark smoke was sent skyward. It was a statement piece, Plastro had escaped.
"Well done Captain," the old general stated, pleased as punch with the glow of the fire against smoke in the disappearing distance, "Now, where are we going?"
"To a commercial container ship, there we have a portal pre-positioned. We'll step through, sinking the ship behind us after we take all assets with us."
"Destroy the portal?! Captain Lion have you lost your senses?!" Plastro demanded, outraged as he stood up.
"Negative sir, we have more, trust me. Our mission, the last one you gave us, was a success. We found it, the source of the bridge between worlds," the operator said, a smile on his bearded face, "There, we have made alliances and have rebuilt our strength far beyond what we would have ever thought possible."
"Really? Well then…I suppose covering our tracks so those Green buffoons don't follow us would be ideal…"
"Oooh…do say more mon ami," Brigitte stated, her interest piqued at Captain Lion's declaration.
"Negative, compartmentalization of vital intelligence is on a need-to-know basis," the Tan special forces operator stated, causing Brigitte to pout as she internalized finding out exactly what they were talking about.
"Well then, captain, it seems we have made our first steps in bringing order to this…chaotic slum of a world. You and your men have done your part, now, it is my turn," Plastro said with a chide grin as he readied himself.
War was to return to this world and to the other world.
It was normally hot, sunny, and full of life in the northern suburbs of Dallas, Texas. Out here, heat was just a fact of life no one became surprised by anymore, even in September as football season began. The state didn't truly start to get cold until mid to late October, when the leaves started to change color. It was this and many other things that Green Army was learning as they continued their minor explorations of this strange, giant world which mirrored theirs so closely, yet diverged so greatly. The Green Army's Dimensional Security Command was tasked with this, and did so with great gusto, after all, they'd only been doing so for a decade by this point.
One lesson that they had learned, the best time to go out and explore was during the days of the school year, when the children of this world were at school while their parents would be at work. No one was home during the day, and meant Greens could venture out and seek to attain new resources and information via vehicle, helicopter, or on foot. Most of the time they used drones, launching them skywards, and then recovering them when they landed nearby. It usually meant that the Green soldiers stationed at these other-world bases were left with some pretty basic duties.
Key among these duties was perimeter patrol, the very essence of maintaining security here at Base Tango-1. It was an excellent time to get out and stretch one's legs and train new arrivals and introduce them to this new arena of operations for the Greens who had just come through from base. Thus, this was exactly where one could find Staff Sergeant Hawk and his elite Bravo Team, the final survivors of the once-named Bravo Company. Within this band of brothers were the specialists of specialists, the best in the army.
There was Rif, an expert on the Green Army's various launchers, such as the M3E1 MAAWS, the M136 AT4, the M72 LAW, M141 BDM, M202 FLASH, the FGM-148 Javelin, the FIM-92 Stinger, and the BGM-71 TOW and all their variants and capabilities, ranges, ballistic properties. The man could make scrap metal out of any armored or dug-in target, fully capable of placing warheads on foreheads with whatever you put in front of him. No one knew tank-hunting like him, in fact, Rif practically wrote the book on it. A battle had more than once hinged upon Rif's ability to turn Tan tanks, IFV's, and APC's into burning hulks with whatever he'd had to hand. Back in the day, when Bravo had first deployed, it had been the venerable bazooka, now, he had all sorts of toys to play with with cool-headed proficiency.
Next on Sarge's roster was Thick, their machine gunner. He was as big and strong as an ox and as tough and loyal as the best guard dog. The man was able to heft in their biggest man-portable machine gun, an M240B, and in the past had been seen going full cyclic with dual-wielded M249 SAW's in both hands. He wasn't the brightest pea in the green pod, but he got the picture, and that was all he needed to tear it up in the most proficient of ways.
Then there was the finest marksman in the Green Army, Bullseye, their ice-cold sniper. The man was an example of silent yet deadly, and performed his work to utter perfection. He had the sharpest eyes in the unit, able to see more with a side glance than many could make out with careful examination with high-powered binoculars and thermal vision. Nothing could escape his pursuit, tracking of all sorts being amongst his forte as a sniper he was capable disappearing faster than any prey. With his arsenal of designated marksmen rifles and true sniper rifles ranging from his humble HK417 to his Barret .50 Caliber Anti-Material Rifle with armor-piercing high-explosive incendiary rounds he could shoot the buttons off a Tan soldier's chest at a thousand yards and leave the shirt unscathed.
Always backing him up was Shrap, their mortarman, who, despite being a rather poor mathematician was a master of the art of indirect fire. His feel for the M224 60mm Mortar he had on his back plus its bigger M252 81mm and M120 120mm cousins was legendary, and yet, his customary response when asked how he did it never ceased to drive men like Sarge insane. 'Feeling it' was not a term the military found very acceptable when trying to impart legitimate knowledge. And neither was calling your team leader 'dude' instead of their rank, the Army tended to get a little displeased with men who did so. But Shrap was not most men, he'd earned his keep more than once, and many a Tan commander had seen his forces close upon Sarge's team at near-enough point-blank range only to see his men go up in smoke as mortar rounds came whistling in, practically landing on top of his men and then, on top of their own mortars and artillery, and more than once, on top of their armored vehicles.
Scorch, the most interest of the batch of Sarge's troops, was certainly a blast from the past, an expert in incendiary warfare at its finest. An M9A1-2 Flamethrower was kept on his person at most times, and when the going got tough, the flames got going. The carnage that Scorch could unleash when turned loose to do so was legendary, especially the tale of Scorch, when faced with combat inside a storage closet in some business, managed to leave behind an inferno which utterly destroyed the other-world factory that the portal they'd come through. Needless to say, Sarge kept a very tight leash on this man.
Lastly, Hoover, a strange and rather passive man. His specialization was not in the destruction and obliteration of the Green Army's enemies. But, it was the saving of lives and property he displayed the finest skills for. His often shaky demeanor and trembling voice belayed a steady hand when focus was of the utmost, and those key moments were when Hoover had to detect landmines and explosives and then disarm them. He was also Bravo Team's de facto medic, each member of the team personally owing their lives to Hoover's steady hands on more than one occasion. Even Hoover himself had surprised everyone as he'd saved his own life on two unique occasions. The first was when they'd first encountered a minefield he himself had stepped on the mine, and proceeded to defuse said weapon with his own two hands. The second and by far most impressive was when he'd performed surgery on himself using nothing but a mirror and a candle for aiding him see what he was doing, taking no morphine to numb the pain. Many would meet Hoover for the first time, and would discount him as a blubbering mess, but Bravo Team would never, ever go into the field without him.
Another Green who was a notional member of the team, but officially not a member, was one Vikki Grimm. Technically she was a civilian, a member of the Green Army's public relations staff. Although in reality, she was as much a part of the team as any other. But she was also the one person who could make the stoic, confident, and brave Staff Sergeant Hawk a bumbling mess of a man. Then again, given Vikki's own inherent beauty, this was hardly surprising. Nowadays though, rather than grabbing a spare M16A3, she was now holding a microphone and/or a camera as part of her job as the face of the Green Army's PR efforts. This was her current assignment today, to tag along with Sarge and his team while they took a new team, Echo Team, out on a patrol.
Things had gone relatively smoothly all-told. Bravo Team had let Echo Team get their feet wet with a quick MH-60M "Blackhawk" helicopter ride off to an outer outpost. It was a smoother and faster ride than their old UH-1 "Huey", and thankfully they had the cover of Captain Blade in an AH-64E "Apache" watching their back on routine air cover.
Their mission was simple, take off through the window of the attic which the Green outpost was set up within and fly out to a neighboring house across the street which was on the corner lot, and had immediate eyes upon the corner store which formed the predominant source of the Plastrification Serum for the Green Army. They had landed and conducted a foot patrol through the various halls of the house and ending up in the garage. The only issue they'd encountered was a rather uncooperative rat which had opted to take a swipe at the team, only to have a AGM-114K Hellfire missile planted right onto its head, ending the annoying creature with extreme prejudice. However they'd met their objective, and had located and extracted a pair of soda cans via two CH-47F's sling-loading the cargo back to base. This cargo would serve to form the basis of their deplastrification serum.
Landing back at base now, flying through the open window of the attic space of the large two-story house they were in Hawk and his men had just made it back before the family who lived here had returned, the eleven year-old daughter and the sixteen year-old son having been picked up from school by their mom. Their dad was usually a little later, seeing as he worked a bit further away. The family was pretty typical as far as the locals went. They went to school, they had jobs, and they kept to themselves, and more importantly, they didn't check the far corners of their attic.
The Greens had a sizeable base set up here, carving their covert permanent presence into the spray foam insulation in the walls for up and down travel without being seen, emerging from cleverly-concealed cutouts in the walls and by attaching hinges to light switches and plugs and crafting entrances which they were able to emerge from with absolute ease. Garages were set up where they went and crafted the same opening hinges as they did with the various plugs with the tiles beneath the cupboards being mounted with powerful motors to lift them like a garage and motor pools of various vehicles such as MRAP's, trucks, tanks, APC's, and other types of military vehicles secretly stored away along with all the infrastructure necessary to support them. Their main base and HQ with their landing pads was in the attic above the exercise room and the theater and game room, which itself was over a three-car garage, offering plenty of space for them to move around unseen. This section of the attic was pretty much sealed away, being on the ceiling with the spray foam providing excellent locations for them to set up their buildings in cover and concealment while they had a series of landing pads for their helicopters while a window had been rigged to several powerful motors which opened it on command to allow their aircraft to depart. Cameras were stationed all across the house, linked into a sophisticated security system with comms relay stations hidden across the house and yard with camouflaged outposts on the perimeter, and a radar station on the roof.
Landing back on the Green Army-built concrete helipad, one of a dozen, the helicopters touched down as gently as ever and Sarge and his men got out, loosely carrying their weapons and taking off their FAST ballistic helmets.
"That was one of the most boring missions we've ever been on Sarge, man," Rif said as he looked back at Hawk as he too dismounted.
"We did get that Hellfire on the rat before it ate us," Shrap replied, "That was pretty sweet."
"Rif's right, we're in a rut, with the peace treaty signed and the Tan rogues few and far in between, we need a mission, a real mission," Hawk noted as he sighed internally at the ease of the mission in question, unbuckling his M4A1 Block 2 as the squad started walking to the entrance to the base, but out walked a familiar face, the former Colonel Grimm, now Major General Grimm.
"General," Hawk saluted as he and his men came over, all of them saluting in turn.
"Bravo Team, good to see you," Grimm said as he returned the salute, "I wish I were here under better circumstances though. General Plastro's escaped.
"Escaped?! How?" Hawk asked, stunned at this declaration.
"With the help of his former special forces, led by Captain Lion. He and all his subordinates were freed and extracted by helicopter. They were taken to a ship waiting offshore, which they sunk after taking a portal back to this world."
"He's back here huh? We've got something for him," Scorch said eagerly, chuckling to himself.
"Bravo Team, your job is to find him, and return him back to his cell."
"Yes sir," Hawk said proudly.
"Vikki will get you the specifics of what intelligence knows about Caption Lion," Grimm nodded.
"Understood," Hawk said as he saluted after being officially dismissed and turned to his men, "Alright Bravo, get your gear sorted and ammo topped-up. I'll meet you in the team room when I find Vikki."
"You know where she'll be," Grimm noted with a smirk.
"Yeah…yeah I know where she'll be," Hawk shook his head as he buckled his carbine back onto his digital green vest and started his walk to where he knew the green-haired beauty would be found.
The man walked past other Green Army troops, who held M4A1's with the standard AN/PEQ-15 aiming lasers, flashlights and either Aimpoint or ACOG or holographic sights. They had their patrol caps on, with their ACH helmets buckled to their vests. The green troops were easily seen in the stark white of the sloping foam insultation covering the ceiling and beams, and they had a number of entrances carved into the foam which they covered with white-painted canvas over sliding metal doors which were the entrance to their base.
The base itself was predominantly within the foam of an unutilized attic space, with the walls of the rooms below going right to the slope of the roof on both sides with one side having the roof end higher on the outside above the driveway where the garage by forty-five degrees and bent again for forty-five degrees to form an enclosed driveway with the backyard tucked behind the house of this corner lot. It was a fine house, in an upscale neighborhood, offering much in the way of resources for a crafty planner to be able to snatch if they were bold enough. Key to this was the Green Army's core of Super Stallion, Chinook, and Tarhe Helicopters which were used for the lifting of cargos to the window they would always depart from. This window was where Hawk was headed, as it was Vikki's favorite place to relax, to bask in the sun and let the breeze brush through her hair. It didn't take long for him to get where he needed to be.
Walking through the hidden door they'd carved from the wood, he walked out into the sun and saw Vikki exactly where he knew she'd be, sitting with her legs dangling over the edge.
"Well, some things don't change huh?" Hawk said, sauntering over to her after checking for anything flying around them, namely crows and ravens.
"It's good that some things stay the same. It's getting hard to tell what hasn't changed these days," Vikki noted with a sigh.
"At least we're the same right?" Hawk chuckled.
"Yep, and so's Plastro, still up to no good," she nodded, looking over at him, "Here's what we've got on Captain Lion and his special forces," she held out a binder to him which Hawk took without question, "He's a ghost Sarge, the best the Tan had, in a way, he's like you."
"No one's like me Vikki," Hawk humorously chided her as he opened the file and started reading.
"Thank goodness," Vikki chuckled, "When we went over the footage we saw that they've updated their gear. We had a TO&E from Plastro's files you recovered a few years back, they never had the kind of gear or the helicopters they showed up at the Jade Mountain Prison with. So either the Tan government's covertly supporting him or…"
"They've got another backer," Hawk replied, looking at some of the images that they had.
"Exactly, Plastro found himself a toy store which he then animated using the deplastrification serum. But he didn't exactly do so with any kind of help aside from Brigitte Bleau and her sect of Blues. If his people have found another then this'll help explain things," Vikki explained.
"I guess that leaves us to start checking every toy shop we can find."
"I don't think so Sarge," Vikki held up a finger, a theory already in her head, "These assets Plastro's men have got are incredibly specialized. No regular old toy shop's going to have that. We're looking for something specific, a factory. And thankfully, there are very few of those around."
"There is one place near here, it was just built actually," Hawk noted, "Only…in the last few years…" he said as he thought about the suspicious nature of this timing.
"Sounds like we have our first stop," Vikki said with a confident smirk, having known all along what Sarge would say.
"Trouble though, we don't have the range for getting there," Hawk replied, "So we have no intel on that location."
"We'll just have to figure that out then," Vikki shrugged.